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ESXi 6.5 Virtual Appliance is now available

11.18.2016 by William Lam // 32 Comments

The much anticipated release of vSphere 6.5 has officially GA'ed and you can find all the release notes and downloads over here. Just like prior releases, I have created a new Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance to aide in quickly setting up a vSphere 6.5 environment for both educational as well as lab purposes. If you have not used this Virtual Appliance before, I strongly recommend you thoroughly review this blog post here for the background before proceeding further.

Disclaimer: Nested ESXi and Nested Virtualization is not officially supported by VMware, please use this at your own risk (the usual).

The new ESXi 6.5 Virtual Appliance includes the following configuration:

ESXi 6.5 OS [New]
GuestType: ESXi 6.5[New]
vHW 11 [New]
2 vCPU
6GB vMEM
2 x VMXNET vNIC
1 x PVSCSI Adapter [New]
1 x 2GB HDD (ESXi Installation)
1 x 4GB SSD (for use w/VSAN, empty by default)
1 x 8GB SSD (for use w/VSAN, empty by default)
VHV added (more info here)
dvFilter Mac Learn VMX params added (more info here)
disk.enableUUID VMX param added
VSAN traffic tagged on vmk0
Disabled VSAN device monitoring for home labs (more info here)
VMFS6 will be used if user selects to create VMFS volume [New]
Enabled sparse swap (more info here) [New]

To be able to import and use this new ESXi VA, you will need to be running at least vSphere 6.0 Update 2 in your environment as I take advantage of some of the new Nested ESXi enhancements in vSphere 6.5. If you need to run ESXi 6.5 on earlier versions of vSphere, then you can take my existing 5.5 or 6.0 VAs and manually upgrade to 6.5.

Now that you made it this far, here is download: Nested_ESXi6.5d_Appliance_Template_v1.ova

Lastly, I have also spent some time building some new automation scripts which takes advantage of my Nested ESXi VAs and deploys a fully functional vSphere lab environment without even breaking a sweat. Below is a little sneak peak at what you can expect 😀 Watch the blog for more details!

USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter (NIC) driver for ESXi 6.5

11.17.2016 by William Lam // 189 Comments

I had several folks ask me about an updated USB 3.0 Ethernet Driver for ESXi 6.5, similar to what I had created for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0. There were some changes that came with ESXi 6.5 and thanks to Songtao, I was able to build a new driver. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular driver, I highly recommend you give this article here a read before proceeding any further. If you are interested in Realtek driver for ESXi 6.5, be sure to check out Jose's blog here for more info.

UPDATE (02/12/19) - A new VMware Native Driver for USB-based NICs has just been released for ESXi 6.5/6.7, please use this driver going forward. If you are still on ESXi 5.5/6.0, you can continue using the existing driver but please note there will be no additional development in the existing vmklinux-based driver.

UPDATE (04/23/18) - For folks who plan to upgrade or install ESXi 6.7, you can continue using the 6.5 driver. I've had several folks reach out and share there have not been any issues and upgrades will preserver the USB NIC driver or you can perform a fresh install and follow the steps below.

To use this new driver for ESXi 6.5, there are some additional steps that is required. Below are the instructions on how to install this on an ESXi 6.5 host.

Step 0 - Download the ESXi 6.5 USB Ethernet Adapter Driver VIB or ESXi 6.5 USB Ethernet Adapter Driver Offline Bundle and upload it to your ESXi host.

Step 1 - If you are upgrading from an existing ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 environment, the first thing you will want to do is uninstall the old driver by running the following command (specify the correct name of the driver):

esxcli software vib remove -n vghetto-ax88179-esxi60u2

Step 2 - Install the VIB by running the following ESXCLI command to install:

esxcli software vib install -v /vghetto-ax88179-esxi65.vib -f

Step 3 - Next, you will need to disable the USB native driver to be able to use this driver. To do so, run the following command:

esxcli system module set -m=vmkusb -e=FALSE

Step 4 - Lastly, for the changes to go into effect, you will need to reboot your ESXi host. Once your system has rebooted, it should now automatically load the USB Ethernet driver and you should see your USB Ethernet Adapter as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 5 - ESXi does not natively support USB NIC and upon a reboot, the USB NICs are not picked up until much later in the boot process which prevents them from being associated with VSS/VDS and their respective portgroups. To ensure things are connected properly after a reboot, you will need to add something like the following in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh which re-links the USB NIC along with the individual portgroups as shown in the example below.

esxcfg-vswitch -L vusb0 vSwitch0
esxcfg-vswitch -M vusb0 -p "Management Network" vSwitch0
esxcfg-vswitch -M vusb0 -p "VM Network" vSwitch0

You will also need to run /sbin/auto-backup.sh to ensure the configuration changes are saved and then you can issue a reboot to verify that everything is working as expected.

How to deploy the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5 running on VMware Fusion & Workstation?

10.27.2016 by William Lam // 31 Comments

As with any new release of vSphere, it is quite common for customers to deploy the new software in either a vSphere home or test lab to get more familiar with it. Although not everyone has access to a vSphere lab environment, the next best thing is to leverage either VMware Fusion or Workstation. With the upcoming release of vSphere 6.5, this is no different. In fact, during the vSphere Beta program, this was something that was asked about by several customers and something I had helped document as the process has changed from previous releases of the VCSA.

In vSphere 6.5, the VCSA deployment has changed from a "Single" monolithic stage where a user enters all of their information up front and the installer goes and deploys the VCSA OVA and then applies the configurations. If you had fat finger say a DNS entry or wanted to change the IP Address before applying the actual application configurations, it would not be possible and you would have to re-deploy which was not an ideal user experience.

In vSphere 6.5, the new UI installer will still allow you to perform a "Single" monolithic stage but it is now broken down into two distinct stages as shown below with their respective screenshots:

Stage 1 - Initial OVA deployment which includes basic networking

Stage 2 - Applying VCSA specific personality configuration

Just like in prior releases of the VCSA, the UI translates the user input into specific OVF properties which are then passed into the VCSA guest for configuration. This means that if you wish to deploy VCSA 6.5 running Fusion or Workstation, you will have two options to select from. You either deploy VCSA and complete both Stage 1 and 2 or just Stage 1 only. If you select the latter option, to complete the actual deployment, you will need to open a web browser to the VAMI UI (https://[VCSA-IP]:5480) and finish configuring the VCSA using the "Setup vCenter Server Appliance" option as shown in the screenshot below.

If your goal is to quickly get the VCSA 6.5 up and running, then going with Option 1 (Stage 1 & 2 Config) is the way to go. If your goal is to learn about the new VCSA UI Installer, then you can at least get a taste of that by going with Option 2 (Stage 1 Config) and this way you can step through Stage 2 using the native UI installer.

One last thing I would like to mention is that there have been a number of new services added to the VCSA 6.5. One example is that vSphere Update Manager (VUM) is now embedded in the VCSA and it is also enabled by default. With these new services, the tiniest deployment size is going to require 10GB of memory where as before it was 8GB. This is something to be aware of and ensure that you have adequate resources before attempting to deploy the VCSA or else you may see some unexpected failures while the system is being configured.

Note: If you have access to fast SSDs and would like to overcommit memory in Fusion or Workstation, you might be able to get this to work leveraging some tricks mentioned here. This is not something I have personally tested, so YMMV.

Here are the steps to deploy VCSA 6.5 using either VMware Fusion or Workstation:

Step 0 (Optional) - Familiarize yourself with setting up VCSA 6.0 was on Fusion/Workstation with this blog post which will be helpful for additional context.

Step 1 - Download & extract the VCSA 6.5 ISO

Step 2 - Import the VCSA OVA which will be located in vcsa/VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.5.0.5100-XXXXXX_OVF10.ova using either VMware Fusion or Workstation (you can either double click or just go to File->Open) but make sure you do NOT power it on after deployment. (this is very important)

Step 4 - Locate the directory in which the VCSA was deployed to and open up the VMX file and append one of the following options (make sure to change the IP information and passwords based on your environment):

Option 1 (Stage 1 & 2 Configuration):

guestinfo.cis.deployment.node.type = "embedded"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr.family = "ipv4"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.mode = "static"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.pnid = "192.168.1.190"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr = "192.168.1.190"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.prefix = "24"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.gateway = "192.168.1.1"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.dns.servers = "192.168.1.1"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.passwd = "VMware1!"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled = "True"
guestinfo.cis.deployment.autoconfig = "True"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.ntp.servers = "pool.ntp.org"
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.password = "VMware1!"
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.site-name = "virtuallyGhetto"
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.domain-name = "vsphere.local"
guestinfo.cis.ceip_enabled = "False"

Option 2 (Stage 1 Only Configuration):

Step 5 - Once you have saved your changes, go ahead and power on the VCSA. At this point, the guestinfo properties that you just added will be read in by VMware Tools as the VCSA is booting up and the configuration will begin. Depending on the speed of your hardware, this can potentially take up to 15min+ as I have seen it. Please be patient with the process. If you wish to check the progress of the deployment, you can open a browser to https://[VC-IP]:5480 and you should see some progress or you can periodically connect to the Hostname/IP Address and once it is done, you should be taken to the vCenter Server's main landing page.